Cognitive Radio For Audio Systems (CoRAS)

Project Description

Wireless communication, once an outsider technology for niche markets, represents today the mainstream way to connect to the Internet. It has the potential to enable ubiquitous information access and social interaction. However, it faces many challenges. The goal of CoRAS is to tackle challenges related to maintaining seamless and efficient network operation under varying conditions and increasing heterogeneity of network infrastructure by explicitly exploiting cooperation and cognition.

The CoRAS project focuses on the research and development of technological means (methods, algorithms, protocols) to maintain seamless and efficient network operation under varying conditions and increasing heterogeneity and complexity of network infrastructure of future PMSE systems by explicitly and efficiently exploiting cooperative and cognitive principles.

Project Goals

The research challenges associated to this project are multidisciplinary. From a technical perspective they involve the efficient exploitation of radio resources and the ubiquitous provision of quality of service in complex heterogeneous wireless environments. From a wider perspective, they involve the understanding of individual and social behavioural user patterns and their impact on the network performance.

At the core of these challenges, a decision-making process can always be found. Thus, the design of an upgradeable decision-making framework capable of dealing with the heterogeneity and complexity that characterizes future wireless communications is required. Relaying on observation and understanding of the environment and the situational context, as well as on methods to force strategic collaborative behaviour, this decision-making framework should allow communication systems to intelligently and autonomously collaborate to achieve satisfactory coexistence.

CoRAS aims at understanding and leveraging the fundamental potentials and challenges behind the application of collaborative and cognitive principles to the resource management and system configuration of future PMSE systems. It will focus on applications such as the choice of the optimum spectrum access strategy given the current local spectrum utilization and the legally valid radio regulatory guidelines, or the selection of the optimum system configuration in order to deliver best-personalized user experiences.